The mood of the people seems to be mixed with regard to bringing Patrick Roy in as the new Avs coach, with a tilt toward the negative.
Not enough dues have been paid, most of you seem to think. And there’s no question the incident with his son in the QMJHL playoffs has stained his reputation with others.

For instance, there is this observation from the Shakespearean-inspired-monikered themaddone:

No.

This is the wrong team for Patrick Roy. Roy is old-school: Broad-Street Bullies style. You’ll know something is wrong when Ian Laperriere leads the team in ice time and Milan Hejduk is being scratched consistently for Scott Parker.

I would love to have the Avs be rebuilt to be a Patrick Roy-style team. But that’s not going to happen. And so, neither should Patrick Roy.

Then there was this from GTY:I love Patrick Roy, but I would not like to see him back next year as the Avs coach, maybe in 10 years after he has grown up a bit and had a chance to coach in the minors or as an NHL assistant. Being a succesful coach in Junior hockey does not guarantee success in the NHL, the Avs are not kids anymore. While I am sure Sackic, Foote, Forsberg and Heduk enjoyed having an intense Patrick Roy as a team mate, I am not so sure they would want him back as their intense and unpredictable coach The Avs need a coach like Mike Babcock who will return them to the disipline and committment needed to play a winning “system”, they need someone with a proven professional track record.

But there were definitely votes in the affirmative, such as this from Hustlin:I say take a chance with him. He has the number one thing you need to coach, passion. He also used to room with Footer when he was a player, so the connection is there, and Foote and Joe can step up and really be leaders.

To all of you talking about signing someone with experience, look at the 4 remaining coaches right now for the teams still in the playoffs (Pittsburgh/Detroit/Philly/Dallas) and tell me how many Cups any of them have won. Thats right, it’s zero.

Well, that last observation is certainly a good one, and here’s what I think: I think you can forget about an older, more experienced coach such as a Pat Burns or Ron Wilson coming here, and can expect a guy in the mold of a Patrick Roy, Kevin Dineen or Todd McLellan.

Burns hasn’t coached in the league in three years, and is coming off cancer treatments to both his colon and liver. He supposedly has a clean bill of health right now, which is terrific. But I just can’t help but think any team, including the Avs, would be too nervous about his health to hire him for such a demanding job.

And even if he had no previous health issues, Burns doesn’t quite fit the profile for an Avs hire. Don’t forget, three of the four coaches in Avs history had no previous NHL head coaching experience. The only one who did was Joel Quenneville, but the Avs made an exception for him, I believe, because he had previously coached in the Avs’ system and was well versed in the customs of the organization.

And one of those customs is: coaches aren’t the stars around there. Coaches have to mostly keep their mouth shut and eliminate any personality they might have had if they want to coach there. Tony Granato was an engaging and funny person as a player and assistant, but as soon as he became the head coach he underwent a personality transplant. No joking around with the media, no outlandish statements, no starry persona. And I think it hurt him some as a coach. He wasn’t allowed to be himself. He had to curtail too much of his personality to fit Pierre Lacroix’s mandate.

The same happened with Marc Crawford and Quenneville. Bob Hartley was the only coach who kept a sense of humor and tried to have a little fun at times with the media, and in the end some of that was held against him by the prudish Avs.

Pat Burns is known as a strong-headed, opinionated guy. Guaranteed, if he came here, he’d be told not to say anything beyond generic pablum to the press, and by extension to you the people, and I can see him chafing at that quite a bit.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Avs have it wrong on this. They think YOU will all be so offended by any kind of critical commentary or “controversy” involving anything said or done by any member of the organization, so they try to micro-manage every little thing when it comes to communication and PR. But what they still don’t get is that it dumbs down their product to a public that is smarter than that, and in fact makes them a source of ridicule at times. There’s no question this has hurt the team at the box office some. I cite the TV and radio situation again as an example; The always-stay-positive, don’t-worry-be-happy spin they put on EVERY game situation in the TV and radio booth has REALLY ticked off a lot of fans, who feel they are being patronized and having their intelligence insulted.

Patrick Roy is also a very high-profile, opinionated man. That doesn’t quite fit the Avs’ M.O. for coaches. But the reason why I think he does and should have a shot at getting the job is he’s paid some dues already in Quebec, he only cares about one thing – winning – and knows the organization’s blueprint on how things are done.

But has he paid enough dues? Maybe not. The new trend seems to be that coaches have to go through the minor-pro ranks some first before getting an NHL shot. Roy has coached junior hockey – and that is still the primary feeder system to the NHL – but the differences to the AHL and other minor-pro leagues are that you’re basically coaching boys in junior and men everywhere else.

Would Roy’s temper issue be a factor in not being hired? I doubt it. Pierre Lacroix had/has a big temper and certainly wasn’t afraid to show it. This is a man who once held a press conference in the McNichols Arena parking lot to publicly denounce my colleague, Mark Kiszla, for being “unethical.”

Of course, the situation involving Roy and his son, Jonathan, in the playoffs a couple months ago was unfortunate, to put it mildly. I’m sure Patrick regrets it and learned from it, though. But it shows that Patrick still has one thing: passion.

To me, I want a coach that has passion. I don’t want some dour guy standing behind the bench. Sure, Scotty Bowman wasn’t very demonstrative ever on the bench, but behind the scenes there was no more passionate man about hockey, or anybody more ruthless in what he’d do to win. Roy has those same qualities.

This is just an observation, but one thing I thought was that Quenneville seemed a little too placid on the bench and maybe a little off the ice as well. You want to see some fire occasionally. But other than the occasional outburst against a referee, mostly what you saw with Coach Q was a guy with his hands in his pockets or writing down little notes after goals against.

I think he has a great hockey mind, is a good guy and a good coach. But to me, I like a little fire and brimstone as a hockey coach. It’s a highly emotional game. Remember when there was a dustup between Detroit’s Mike Babcock and the Avs’ Tony Granato in a game this year, the one where Lidstrom got hurt?

Maybe I’m just a neanderthal guy, but if I was the coach of the Avs and the other team’s head coach was yelling and cursing and pointing fingers at my own assistant, I would have jumped up and gotten in the guy’s face. Coach Q stood there and watched. That shouldn’t mean anything probably, but it’s just an observation.

Some of you might say: well, Marc Crawford was a hothead and got in guys’ faces on the bench (Bowman in ’97) and what has he won since 1996? Nothing.

And that’s a valid point. I’m not saying a guy needs to jump up and down and scream and say outrageous things to the media to be a good coach. I just want passion for winning, that’s all, and I know Patrick will always have that.

Let’s also not ignore the fact that a Roy hire would create buzz and pump up season-ticket sales some. Yeah, I know Wayne Gretzky’s presence in Phoenix hasn’t exactly sold out the arena there, but the Great One never played for the Coyotes don’t forget. Oh yeah, and they haven’t made the playoffs in several years. Roy would be coming into a pretty good team, one who led to two Stanley Cups previously. The fans loved him here, and I think they’d love to see him back. Not all of you, of course, but the Joe Sixpack fan, the ones who make the difference between sellouts and non-sellouts, would like it or at least notice it.

Todd McLellan and Kevin Dineen? They both have built up some good coaching resumes, and my hunch says it’s going to come down to a guy like that who gets the Avs’ job, if not those two specifically.

Dineen played at DU, which means nothing to Francois Giguere or anybody else with the Avs. But at least he has a little history in this town. More important, of course, he has done a hell of a job with Portland of the AHL. He’s won one Calder Cup already, and has a team in the Eastern Conference finals right now, one that was supposed to be an also-ran this year but knocked off the top team in the league (Providence) in the last round.

Dineen, by the way, was the best man at Joel Quenneville’s wedding – and vice-versa.

I can say with some certainty that Dineen would be interested in the job here. But nothing is going to happen with him until his team’s season is over, which could be another month.

The same applies with McLellan. Sometimes assistant coaches get permission to interview with another team while their team’s season is still on, but I doubt highly that the Wings would grant permission to let their own assistant talk to the Avs before their playoffs are done.

Giguere said he is in no rush to name somebody, so expect this to take some time. At least as long as the NHL and AHL playoffs are over.